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156-145

History made but not a positive 'first' for Reformatories in Canada's history books. Unforgettable, despite their desire to ignore and forget it, I'm sure, in the coming campaign!
How the mighty "reformers" have fallen.

Back in 2005 when the Liberals were voted down by a confidence motion, I didn't know who would win the ensuing election; but it certainly felt good to at least have that one day to finally say once and for all to a hated government: "Get out. You're done."

So enjoy and savour this moment, as we conservatives did in 2005; this time around it would not surprise me if it were your only opportunity to do so.

"On the contrary. I am happy to draw attention to Harper's offensive attempt to rebrand OUR government in his personal name. And will do so at every chance."
Did you get a chance to review the "Government of Ontario" website and come up with a better explanation as to why the "McGuinty Government" is used, as to date 26,410 times. & how this is not an "offensive attempt to rebrand OUR government"

I think it is pretty arrogant of McGuinty too, if that is what he is doing. The website does refer a lot to the McGuinty government, but are press releases actually being issued under the "McGuinty Government" letterhead/headline? Did he issue a directive to civil servants to refer to the McGuinty Government instead of the Government of Ontario? Are official documents being issued and published by the "McGuinty Government" instead of the "Government of Ontario"? Is there a rule against doing such things in Ontario like there is federally?

The website is pretty bad and I don't like it. But if the answer is no to those questions then it is comparing apples to oranges, or at least sour granny smith apples to sweet macintosh apples.

A big part of democracy has already been restored with the multiple prima facie contempt rulings and the House finding the government in contempt, and finally showing some backbone to keep these clowns accountable.

Beyond that, the Liberals have proposed a number of democracy enhancing measures. So have the NDP.

Harper is not evil and the Liberals don't have all of the answers. But Harper has systematically and intentionally undermined some pretty fundamental aspects of accountability and Parliamentary democracy. Parliament finally stood up on principle and said enough. So it's not about the parties but about our democratic system and Parliament.

Again, what a bunch of nonsense. Leave it to this current opposition bunch to take legitimate criticisms of the government and turn them into absurd and bitterly partisan attacks against a despised enemy. For shame.

The government, sorry, The Stephen Harper Government (TM) refused on every occasion to do what the law required them to do, Dennis. After exhausting all avenues of holding them to account, the opposition is left with no option but to hold them in contempt and bring them down. It is in fact their duty.

You yourself have written in this space countless times that if the opposition thinks the government is unaccountable they only have to pull the plug. Which is exactly what they have now done.

The government doesn't get to decide whether or not to be accountable, when it wants to be accountable and on what issues it will be accountable.

Uh huh, yeah, well, he's changed his tune. People do that, despite the fact that some people are not willing to allow them to do that. That being said, Harper did not admit that he was wrong about that, which probably would have gone a long way to dispelling the never ending barrage of comments like yours above. Oh well.

For what? Not fully costing future programs, as though they're the only government in Canada or elsewhere to do so? Some of you have failed to give your heads a big shake. As a result, I don't think it's going to be pretty for you. Just saying.

I am quite sure that they have, it just does not get reported. And, just in case you really want to pursue this further, let it be known that the burden of proof falls squarely on your shoulders. It should not take you too long to go through every economic and fiscal estimate or prediction they have ever made.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_burden_of_proo…

So they've been held in "contempt" and a $300 million election is being forced because the government didn't fully cost a couple of programs. This is sheer lunacy. I'm sorry. Good luck with all that. And the worst part is that so many of you have imbibed the kool-aid. You can't even see what you've done to yourselves. For the first time I can ever remember, the opposition is more out of touch than the government is. I never would have thought that that was possible, yet here we are.

McGuinty has brought on a whole heck of a lot of problems, big problems too. And I campaigned for John Tory in the mayoral race. But Hudak is worse and the party has become increasingly hijacked by the far right like Hillier. Same reason I couldn't be a Conservative Party member. There is no Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario anymore, no Red Tories.

I'm probably closest to being a Bill Davis Tory, at least provincially. McGuinty is a long way off but he's also a long way closer.

And for the record, I was trying to point out that in order to prove your claim, you actually had to demonstrate that every instance of prediction and projection was in fact false. That is, your task is not to find one being correct, but show that all are incorrect.

Similar too, though not exactly the same as, claiming that all ravens are black.

I like John Tory, too. When you get down to it, we're probably not that far apart on most of the issues. Here's an interesting hypothetical for you: if Harper no longer led the CPC, is there any chance you'd consider a "Rocco Rossi" move at the federal level? ;-)

Like I said, there is no Progressive Conservative Party anywhere anymore, federally or provincially. The social conservatives rule the roost.

I'd have a hard time voting in the US. I could see being a Rockefeller Republican but same issue, they are being eclipsed by the social conservatives. That is where we are heading and why, federally, I end up with the Liberals – a centralist, moderate party.

It's just that I don't see the Harper Conservatives as being that much worse than the Martin (or for that matter the Chretien) Liberals. So I'm not convinced that replacing them will solve anything. I also think a lot of the outrageousness of the current government's behaviour is due to the seat distribution, and of course their willingness to behave poorly.

Having said which, I'm not going to assume that an Ignatieff led Liberal government would behave as badly as the preceding three governments have, but I'm not that hopeful about it either.

As an aside, I actually agree with the contempt of parliament vote, I'm not convinced it was made out of principle though …

Even when you look yourself we get an' if that is what he is doing'
Do you think the civil service decided on their own to start every news release "The McGuinty Government …." Funny that you never noticed before.

A government–not a political party on the campaign trail, but the actual governing government, "didn't fully cost a couple of programs" while simultaneously holding themselves out as good fiscal managers!

This is contempt of parliament, this is contempt of Canadians, this is even contempt of common sense.

It's just that I don't see the Harper Conservatives as being that much worse than the Martin (or for that matter the Chretien) Liberals.

***

Where've you been the past five years? The pro-rogues, the refusal to give the Afghan docs, killing a bill in the senate and passing a fake fixed election law then breaking it were unprecedented. There was other bad stuff (and yes the Chretien liberals also played hardball and at times did shady things), but this is the stuff for which they MUST be shown the door.

What misinformation? I don't believe I claimed anyone had said anything, of course if you wanted to be helpful instead of being reflexively rude and accusatory you could always point me to the policy on democratic reform on the Liberal website.

They claim to be committed to democratic renewal and have what seems like a worthy open government initiative (no sarcasm). However, I can't see anything that is what I'm looking for in terms of democratic reform, such as reducing the power of the PMO in general, and reducing the power and influence of both the PMO and the party machinery over individual MPs in particular. If I have missed seeing such policies then I would be grateful to be pointed to them.

Well, I don't see this stuff as being unprecedented at all. In fact I would say that the behaviour of the Chretien and Martin governments was a clear precedent for the behaviour of the Harper government.

If you want to make the argument that the behaviour of the Harper government has been worse then I wouldn't necessarily disagree (for what its worth I think they've treated parliament with more disdain but haven't been as bad in other ways), but I think its just a matter of scale.

Let's put some arbitrary numbers to it. I'd be willing to accept that the Martin government was a 6 or 7 on the scale of poor behaviour with respect to parliament (where 0 is good and 10 is bad) and that Harper is an 8 or 9. I get the impression that you'd put Harper at 20 or 30, which is where we disagree.

<edit> One more point, I don't intend to clutter the discussion with a list of bad things that I think the Liberals did under Martin and Chretien, but I think it would stack up pretty well with your list. One of the reasons I don't want to do this is because I don't want you to think I'm defending Harper because I'm not. I just think that you have a somewhat rose coloured view of how despicable the Liberals were before him. </edit>

My apologies, John Edgar. First for my reflexively rude and accusatory comment (you were totally right on that) and secondly for mashing policy proposal and the open government initiative together in my mind, and thirdly for not looking at the website immediately before my comment to ensure I didn't do the second thing.

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